nLab large volume limit

Idea

In Riemannian geometry given any function/functional on the space of Riemannian metrics $g$ on some manifold $X$, then its large volume limit is, if it exists, the limit of the functional evaluated on a sequence $t g$ of metrics as $t \to \infty$.

This plays a role in particular in the studies of sigma-model quantum field theory with target space $(X,g)$. Here the large volume limit may equivalently be thought of as the limit in which the extension of the brane described by the $\sigma$-model vanishes.

One example is the Witten genus, which is the large volume limit of the partition function of the superstring $\sigma$-model (Witten 87, p. 4)

References

• Edward Witten, Elliptic Genera And Quantum Field Theory , Commun.Math.Phys. 109 525 (1987) (Euclid)